Tag Archives: National Rifle Association

Michelle Obama’s warning to gun owners

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By  via The Daily Caller (10/11/11)

Kasey’s Note: It is NOT just the Presidency at stake in this coming election, but the US Supreme Court is in danger of having a liberal majority.  Just look at the Ninth Circuit Court in Northern California and tell me you aren’t scared!

Nearly three years into President Obama’s first term in office, Michelle  Obama finally said something with which I can agree.

At a recent fundraiser for President Obama’s re-election campaign in  Providence, Rhode Island, the first lady told her audience:

“We stand at a fundamental crossroads for our country. You’re here because  you know that in just 13 months, we’re going to make a choice that will impact  our lives for decades to come … let’s not forget what it meant when my husband  appointed those two brilliant Supreme Court justices … let’s not forget the  impact that their decisions will have on our lives for decades to come.”

This was music to the ears of the small, affluent crowd of admirers who  cheered and applauded. But to gun owners, Michelle Obama’s remarks should sound  like a warning bell, alerting us to the danger ahead should Barack Obama win  re-election and get the opportunity to alter the current make-up of the Supreme  Court.

When Americans flock to the polls in 13 months, we will not simply decide  which direction our country should take over the next four years. Rather, we  will decide whether or not our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear  arms will survive over the next several decades.

Currently, the Second Amendment clings to a 5-4 pro-freedom majority on the  Supreme Court. Just one vote is all that stands between the America our  Founding Fathers established and a radically different America that Barack Obama  and his supporters envision.

If you want to read something scary, take another look at the minority  opinions in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller and McDonald  decisions that struck down Washington, D.C.’s and Chicago’s unconstitutional gun  bans. In the Heller dissent, four justices concluded that the Second  Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to own a firearm, nor does it  protect our right to defend ourselves, our families, or our property. In McDonald, the same four justices argued that the 5-4 Heller decision should be reversed.

If these four justices had just one more vote on their side, their opinion — that the Second Amendment should not exist in today’s modern society — would be  the law of the land today. And assuredly, the anti-gun activist wing of the  court knows how close they are to gaining the upper hand. As Justice Ruth Bader  Ginsburg told a Harvard Club audience in 2009, she looks forward to the day when  a “future, wiser court” overturns 5-4 decisions like Heller.

Praying for the health of five justices is not a sound legal strategy for  ensuring that our Second Amendment freedoms survive the relentless legal assault  that gun-ban groups are waging in courtrooms across America. We need a president  who will nominate sound, originalist nominees to the high court — nominees who  will preserve the freedoms our Founding Fathers enshrined in our  Constitution.

If President Obama gets the opportunity to tilt the balance of the Supreme  Court in his favor, we’re unlikely to see another pro-gun victory at the Court  in our lifetime. Even worse, the 5-4 majorities in Heller and McDonald will be in serious jeopardy of being reversed, effectively  eliminating the Second Amendment.

NRA members, gun owners and all freedom-loving Americans should heed Michelle  Obama’s warning. We must spend the next 13 months working to make sure her  husband doesn’t get four more years to destroy American freedom for generations  to come.

Chris W. Cox is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves  as the organization’s chief lobbyist.

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The gun industry is fighting for your rights! Are you?

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By Jeff Waller, Tupelo Tea Party Examiner

 

BATFE

Washington (Reuters) is reporting that a U.S. judge’s  decision to uphold the recent regulation changes mandated by the BATFE requiring  gun dealers in four states bordering Mexico to report the sales of multiple  semi-automatic rifles has been appealed by the gun industry.  The report  says that Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of  Columbia ruled that the reporting requirements ordered last year were  sufficiently narrowly tailored.  Collyer writes the reporting demand “was  limited to only certain sales of certain guns in certain states, ATF did not  exceed its authority.”

Gun dealers, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the National Shooting  Sports Foundation(NSSF) challenged the requirements.  They argue that they  would effectively require national registration of firearms sales, which they  said the BATFE was not authorized to do.  The reporting requirements are  that dealers must report within five business days a sale of two or more  semiautomatic rifles to the same person. That includes rifles with a caliber  greater than .22 that are able to accept a detachable magazine.

The rules, which supposedly apply to only Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and  California are capricious at best.  Because the ruling extends across  state lines, the lawsuit is correct in its assertion that the requirement is  national in scope.  But even if it was not, BATFE is not a governing  body.  It cannot create law.  If this applied to one state only, the  requirement would be wrongheaded because BATFE cannot create what amounts  to state law.

The appeal was filed on Monday with the district court and will go to the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  The BATFE  issued the requirements in a “stepped-up effort to clamp down on the weapons  flowing across the border to drug cartels in Mexico,” and they affect more than  8,000 gun dealers in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

BATFE’s demands come on the heels of the now-infamous Fast and Furious  program which allowed 2,000 or more high-powered, and assault weapons to be  illegally transferred across the border into Mexico.  Several of these  weapons have already turned up as the murder weapon in several cases.

BATFE is engaged in a form of self-regulation, or self-governance that  involves an unauthorized interpretation of the Constitution.  BATFE does  not have this priviledge.  Only the Congress may enact law.  The  changes amount to legislation which infringes on Americans’ rights to keep and  bear arms.  There is no law against a qualified American citizen’s purchase  of any number of the targeted rifles.  There is no restriction in this  regard.  The new rules amount to an assault on the US Constitution in two  ways.

First, and most obvious, is the impingement on the Second Amendment by  creating an undue burden on the citizen, forcing the citizen to relinquish part  of his freedom in order to facilitate an easing of the burden of the BATFE to  control illegal weapons traffic.  It is not incumbent on the citizen to aid  the BATFE.  Also, the BATFE does not have the authority to arbitrarily  change its own regulations.  Regulation is the jurisdiction of the  Congress.

Second, the forced reporting amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure to  the records and business on the gun dealer and the privacy of the citizen.   The citizen has the right to expect that his or her privacy is respected in a  legal hunting rifle purchase.  BATFE is getting into a realm where it does  not belong.

According to The Washington Post, “A federal judge has thrown out a  lawsuit challenging new reporting requirements for gun dealers that the Obama  administration says are needed to help staunch the flow of powerful rifles to  violent Mexican drug gangs.”

Read that again!  The Obama administration says these changes are “needed to help staunch the flow of powerful rifles to violent Mexican drug  gangs.”  The administration admits to no wrong-doing in the Fast and  Furious program which did exactly that.  Remember, this operation was  supposedly designed to track the weapons to the buyer, but it never did.   None of the over two thousand guns were tracked.  Eric Holder has been  implicated in the planning, execution, and now an apparent cover-up of the  fiasco.  Yet they expect Americans to accept this attack on their  freedoms.

What is next?  Will the Obama administration issue a mass mailing of  pornography to all of the homes in the US, and then tell us that we need to  allow them to open our mail for us?  The logic is the same.  Create a  crisis by either ineptitude or maliciousness, then demand the freedom to be  surrendered in order to combat the crisis.

“While we understand ATF’s motivation is to try to curtail violence in  Mexico, Congress simply has not granted ATF regulatory carte blanche,” the NSSF  said.  This writer is confident that the ruling by Judge Collyer will be  overturned on appeal.

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